


Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Nephew

by Cartoon_Idiot_59



Category: Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Espionage, Extramarital Affairs, F/M, International Relations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 11:13:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21053450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cartoon_Idiot_59/pseuds/Cartoon_Idiot_59
Summary: A study on the circumstances leading to the birth of Sherlock Holmes' smarter nephew.





	Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Nephew

Mycroft Holmes was not a happy man. He was miles from home, in London, the only place he felt comfortable. Miles from his club, miles from a decent restaurant, miles from civilisation. Alas, such is the life of a member of Her Majesty's secret service. Sometimes, someone senior had to take an interest. 

The saddest part is that he wasn't sure the crown should be taking an interest. At all. Granted, this Balkan mess was upsetting the delicate balance of power left from the Congress of Berlin and Bismarck's reordering the maps of central Europe in the wake of the Ottoman empire's loss against Russia, but Holmes had never trusted Bismarck and his own feelings were that Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire could, possibly, stand to be taken down a peg. 

After maintaining to his superiors in the home office that, by his studies and assessment of the political realities and his fervent belief that Germany was going to be trouble in the soon to be arriving twentieth century, along with the resurgence of the communist nonsense of the 1840's, he went (not without complaining. Long and loud complaining.) on his way to Serbia. He soon tracked down the dissident, the bounder, the blighter, an unknown calling himself Desdinova, to central Serbia where he was setting up a Serbian nationalist organization calling itself the Crna Ruka (Serbian for "Black Hand") modeling itself after the similarly named Morte Alla Francia Italia Anela which had sprung up in Sicily during the Napoleonic wars and which in the interim had fallen into piracy and corruption. Another bastion of so-called 'organised crime' being antithetical to Crown and Country, he set the bloke to heel and he fled to Montenegro. 

So Mycroft Holmes found himself in Montenegro, near Podgorica, practically at the foot of the Black Mountain itself, Mount Lovćen, Crna Gora, in the home of a British foreign services agent named Thomas Wolfe whom had, as they say, 'gone native' and married himself a local girl named Teodora Pavlović. Teodora was a black-haired, black-eyed beauty, brilliant, fiery (like all Tsernagores, it seemed) and somewhat bored with Thomas whom, whilst competent, was, well, ordinary. The Foreign Office stamped out men exactly like him in droves. She was fascinated by the brilliance of Mycroft Holmes and set out to seduce him. 

Mycroft allowed this. He wasn't sure why. He was a member of a class that while seducing a young virgin without intending matrimony was unthinkable, seducing the wife of a dear friend was not. It is a very English thing. Mycroft Holmes was not in the habit of seducing anyone, married or not and generally held himself above such sordid behavior. But. He was miles from home, the rotter Desdinova had utterly disappeared, the woman was beautiful, brilliant and, most of all, insistent. He was only human after all.

So, Mycroft Holmes wired his superiors at the Home Office that the Black Hand was dismantled and the ringleader on the run, whereabouts unknown. He was called home where he settled back into his groove between home, office, club and favorite places to dine and seldom if ever gave a thought to a brilliant black-haired, black-eyed beauty from the Balkans. But unbeknownst to anyone in this little domestic tragedy, he, rather like the anarchists so admired by the defunct Black Hand, had left behind a ticking time bomb.

In due time Teodora Wolfe delivered of herself a son. She and Thomas named him Nero, after the mountain. He chased dragonflies with Marko Vukčić, with whom he later fought his true father's great worry the Germans. (Desdinova reappeared in 1912, reformed the Crna Ruka and found a catspaw named Gavrilo Princip, a 19 year old Serbian nationalist who assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Having finally succeeded in starting the Great War, Desdinova returned home to a planet near Sirius. Mycroft Holmes, not being a follower of the writings of Herbert George Wells would, of course, never think to look for him there. His brother could perhaps had warned him, but Sherlock himself put no credence to Mr. Wells' work, reading it for entertainment and to annoy John Watson.) Nero then worked for the Austrian government, regretted it, wandered Europe, west Asia and north Africa, bought a house in Cairo, made his way to the United States, bought another house in New York and settled down as a consulting detective just like his uncle. From his father he got his laziness, his taste in food (but not drink, preferring a pilsner to an ale any and every day of the week) and his sheer brilliance. 

Years later, whilst on the telephone with his friend Ethelbert (or "Geoffrey") Hitchcock — Wolfe's contact in London who handles inquiries to be made in Europe, Hitchcock told him, "Nero, I've worked it out! You're the bastard son of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler!" "Ethelbert," replied Wolfe "I've heard that nonsense much of my life. I'll tell you a secret, though. I'm Sherlock Holmes' smarter nephew."

**Author's Note:**

> I keep seeing little pieces on the likelihood of Nero Wolfe being Sherlock Holmes' bastard son. He's much more like Mycroft, so here's my take, with just a touch of Imaginos mythos added in. Enjoy!


End file.
